


Safety Blanket

by Goldy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Crack, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldy/pseuds/Goldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten ponders a rubber duck. Mickey ponders a corridor. Rose talks about Jimmy Stone. Not crack, but not, not crack. Post-GitF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety Blanket

**I.**

The Doctor stared at the duck.

The duck stared back.

He put on his glasses and shifted. Its beady little rubber ducky eyes did not move. He prodded it with the tip of the sonic screwdriver and it emitted a high-pitched _QUACK_.

He yanked the screwdriver back, eyes narrowing. He considered his next move carefully.

He heard footsteps behind him, but he didn’t move his gaze away from the duck.

“You’re still here?” There was enough sympathy in Rose’s voice to mask most of her disbelief.

He chewed on the end of the sonic screwdriver and considered. “It’s not the same.” He decided to ignore the way his voice sounded like a whine.

Rose crouched down next to him. “Doctor, it’s… a rubber duck.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

He hesitated. He didn’t particularly _want_ to explain that he’d slipped so far in his last incarnation that a yellow rubber duck had been the first thing to make him smile after the Time War. Oh, Rose would be sympathetic, no doubt. She wouldn’t even make him feel silly for finding comfort in a rubber _duck_. But there were some things he didn’t like to talk about and the Time War happened to be one of them.

“It was just… something…” he almost prodded the duck with the sonic screwdriver again and then pulled his hand back just in time. “It was something I had. In my last incarnation.”

Rose looked from the duck, back to him, and then back to the duck. “A rubber duck?” She schooled her face into a neutral frown. “Like, what, to sing to in the shower?”

He managed to tear his eyes away from the duck long enough to shoot her an accusing glare. “No,” he said. He paused. “Well, sometimes.”

Rose raised her eyebrows.

“I had a very nice singing voice! Probably still do, in fact. Multi-talented, that’s me.” He took a long breath. “But it was more than that. It was like… it was… ooh, a safety blanket! It was comforting.” His voice softened. “Oh, I dunno. It sounds silly.”

Rose bit her lip. “A bit, yeah.” But she sat down next to him, crossing her legs and mimicking his intense stare. “It’s cute.”

“I suppose,” he said.

She didn’t look at him when she said, “It’s not anymore, is it? Not… a safety blanket.”

He looked at her in surprise, and had to remind himself that while _he_ was used to the regeneration process, it was still new to Rose. She could accept the new body and personality, but it was bound to be confusing for her.

“No,” he admitted. “New personality. All that.”

Rose looked down at her hands. “Oh.”

He thought hard. “Definitely _not_ a rubber duck sort of man. Now, a stuffed animal? Genius! It’s an all-season sort of toy, too. All soft and cuddly… what?”

There was something adoring in Rose’s smile. He forgot what he was trying to say. “That is so completely daft,” she said.

Then she threw her arms around him in a hug that almost knocked him flat on his back. In her haste, she accidentally kicked the rubber duck. He heard it skid across the room and bang against the console.

Ah, well, Hugging Rose was far preferable to staring at a yellow duck, anyway.

“We can get you a teddy bear,” Rose promised, voice muffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah?” he said. And then, “You’re not going to tell Mickey, are you?”

“Nah,” Rose said. “Besides, Mickey still wet the bed when he was twelve-years-old.”

“ _Really_?”

There was an embarrassed paused. “Don’t you _dare_ tell him I said that or the bear will get it.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, just try me,” Rose said. “I had this friend Mildred, yeah? Popped the heads off her Barbies after she spat gum in my hair. That was the end of that friendship, tell you that much.”

“That’s it,” he said. “You are _not_ baby-sitting my teddy bear in the event of a life-threatening situation.”

Across the room, he swore he heard the duck give a piteous little quack. He’d pick it up later. That is, if the TARDIS hadn’t taken care of it first. She often looked after his old possessions when he regenerated.

“Now,” he said importantly. “I have _just_ the right place in mind for stuffed bears…”

**II.**

At some point after agreeing to let Mickey travel with them, the Doctor remembered his rubber ducky. Sure enough, he hadn’t seen so much as a flash of yellow since Rose had kicked it across the floor. Should he need the rubber duck again, he had every confidence the TARDIS would find it for him.

It made him hope the TARDIS could make Mickey disappear in the same way. Not that he’d ever tried to pawn a companion off on the TARDIS before, of course. It was just that—Mickey tended to be _everywhere_. At breakfast. At tea. At dinner. In the console room when he was trying to pilot the TARDIS.

The kicker was, Rose was nowhere to be found. Rose—the companion he _actually_ wanted to spend time with.

Clearly, if he just… made Mickey disappear, Rose would come back.

“What’s down there again?”

Mickey stared down a long narrow corridor, nervous hands bunching up against his jeans.

The Doctor flashed a wide smile. “Oh, just this… reset-button thing. Need it to recalibrate the TARDIS.”

Mickey looked doubtful. “And how come you can’t just wave your sonic screwdriver at it?”

“Mickey,” he said impatiently. “If you’re going to travel in the TARDIS, you’re going to have to start helping out. It’s just a button. You’ll be fine!”

He tried to make his voice sound as reassuring as possible, but Mickey continued to stare at him suspiciously.

“She’s avoiding you because of what happened in France,” Mickey said. “You know that, don’t you? Remember when you left her stranded so you could hop on a horse and swoop in and save some other woman?”

Well, _that_ went and put a bit of a kink in the “blame Mickey” plan. He stopped to think. It had been two days since the thing with Reinette in France. Surely Rose had to be past that by now?

Mickey nodded. “Sorry, mate. Reckon you’re going to have to talk to her about it.” He smacked him on the shoulder in what was no doubt supposed to be some ridiculous expression of male camaraderie.

He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Rose’s voice cut him off. “Doctor, what’s going on?”

His head snapped around. “Rose!” He couldn’t stop his smile. It really _did_ feel like he hadn’t seen her in forever.

She glanced at the open passageway. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” said Mickey. “The Doctor was going to make me go down there. Said I had to… re-calibrate the TARDIS?”

The Doctor tried to shake his head at him, but Rose wasn’t fooled. Bugger.

“You were going to send him down _there_?” Rose said, horrified. “Doctor!”

“Just… just for a bit,” he said. “The TARDIS would have spat him out eventually!”

Rose blanched. “You can’t hide _people_ in your ship!”

“It’s only Mickey!”

“Oi!” said Mickey. “Standing right here!”

The Doctor waved a hand to shush him, but Rose grit her teeth and said, “Doctor, can I speak with you, please? In private?”

Mickey sent him a smug look, which he returned with a warning glare. He could always shove Mickey inside the TARDIS when Rose was asleep.

Dutifully, he followed Rose down the hall and to the console room. There, she whirled on him and said, “You were the one who invited him along!”

“I know, but—”

“I didn’t even want him here!” Rose continued. “And you’re the one acting like a five-year-old. God! I don’t even understand you sometimes!’

She sat down heavily on the pilot’s chair and scrubbed her hands over her face.

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets. And waited. And then waited some more.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “Um… was that it?”

He had a moment where he hoped everything would go back to normal, but Rose picked her head up, her eyes telling him things were far from over. He shifted uncomfortably.

“I left Mickey before, you know,” she started. “There was this bloke, Jimmy Stone. He used to make me so… crazy. I couldn’t think straight when he was around. Dropped out of school because of him.” She snorted. “He wanted to start a band.”

The Doctor hadn’t been expecting that. He vaguely considered finding Jimmy Stone and making him disappear in the TARDIS. “ _And_?”

“I knew,” she said. “I knew things weren’t right, but I kept giving him all these chances, telling myself that it’d get better ‘cause he loved me and I loved him. I told myself that it was the important thing. And he wasn’t a bad person. He was just… young. Didn’t know any better. It hurt, sometimes, but I let it go. Just… let myself be a doormat. Wasn’t his fault, not really.”

She looked at him and he glanced away, suddenly quite sure they were no longer talking about Jimmy Stone.

“Rose—”

“Infatuation wore off in the end,” Rose said. She rubbed her arms like she was chilled. “Had to go crawling to Mum and Mickey, hundreds of pounds in debt. And they took me back. Both of them. Didn’t even think about it.”

“Rose.” He said her name more forcefully and she jumped. Her eyes widened like she realized she’d said too much.

He took a measured breath. He hadn’t wanted to talk about what happened in France. Better to forget and move on. That’s how it had always been. But it dawned on him that if he didn’t say something, didn’t try and fix whatever it was that was broken, things might never be the same between them again.

“You were right to wait,” he said. “Back there, on that spaceship. Five and a half hours, I know, but… Rose.” He crouched down in front of her, and placed his hands on her knees. She didn’t back away. “If it hadn’t been that fireplace, it would have been something else. I promise you. I would have found a way back. I wouldn’t let you down.”

“But…” her voice caught and she looked at the ceiling, fighting a silent battle with herself. Finally, she glanced back down and placed her hands over his. He smiled encouragingly. “You invited her along.”

He shrugged. “Infatuation?”

“Yeah,” Rose said heavily. She went back to staring at the ceiling.

“Hey—” he sat next to her. “Does it matter?”

He was pushing her, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but perhaps it was time to have it out. This thing, with Rose, it was confusing and wonderful and real—no doubt about any of that. It was all those things, and neither of them could ever manage to say a damn thing about it.

She shook her head. “Guess not,” she only said. She ducked her head, but not fast enough to hide her watery eyes.

He felt like kicking himself. He wouldn’t apologize for Reinette, but he could have handled it better. Loads better.

“It won’t happen again.”

She jerked her head up in surprise, forgetting her tears. “What?”

“It’s over, now,” he said. “And it won’t happen again.”

“You can’t promise that,” Rose said. “Nobody can.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. He gave her a long look. “Yes, I can.”

She blushed under his stare.

“Besides,” he continued softly, “a life like this would kill someone like Reinette in the end.” He closed his eyes and silently added, _It will kill you, too_. Not that he was ready to accept that. Not that he’d _ever_ be ready.

He felt Rose nudge him in the arm and he opened his eyes to her warm smile. “I didn’t want to tell you this earlier,” she said. “Cause you were upset and all, but I’m not sure she would’ve liked your teddy bear.”

He made a noise that might have been a laugh, but sounded more like a grunt. Without thinking, he gathered her up in a tight hug and released a shuddering breath of air. She squeezed him like she was trying to protect him from the pain of losing Reinette, of one day losing her, too.

“I’m better looking than him, right?” he said after a moment. “Jimmy Stone?”

Rose chuckled. “Oh, loads better.”

“Yeah?” he said, pleased. “Just since the regeneration or have I always—”

She hugged him tighter, but only said, “Don’t push it.”  



End file.
